FLASH
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Gabriel Garcia Marquez's last novel, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, was published 20 years ago, but the Colombian author's legacy didn't end there.
After his death in 2014, an unfinished work - consisting of 5 drafts on which the Nobel Prize-winning author was working in the last years of his life - remained in his personal archive at the University of Texans.
On Wednesday, the day Garcia Marquez would have turned 97 years old, the already completed novel "See you in August" (original: En agosto nos vemos) was published by the author's sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo Garcia.
But as the pair admit in the book's preamble, Marquez did not want his work published. "This book doesn't work," the children remember their father telling them before his death. "It must be destroyed."
After examining the manuscripts, his family was determined that this book contained the essence of the writer who has captivated so many readers around the world for decades. In the book, Marquez's sons admit that its publication was an "act of treason". But Gonzalo said at a press conference on Tuesday that nothing has been added beyond what was included in the various manuscripts of the novel left by his father.
"The novel was a bit scattered and fragmented, but it was complete," he said, as the brothers presented the book at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid.
“It may not be as good as your greatest books,” adds Rodrigo: “But, as we say in the prologue, it certainly contains many of his outstanding characteristics: beautiful prose, insight into the human being, the power of description".
Garcia Marquez worked on the novel for years until he began to suffer from dementia. The Colombian author's memory loss damaged his confidence in his work, the boys say.
"He never kept unpublished books," says Rodrigo. "Any book he didn't finish and wasn't satisfied with was destroyed. So the fact that he didn't destroy this book of his, I think it was also a sign that he liked it. Gabo (as Garcia Marquez was affectionately known) when he was in his right mind, he would either finish the book or destroy it, so we say that the disease took its toll."
Set in an unnamed Caribbean location, "En Agosto nos vemos" follows protagonist Ana Magdalena Bach as she makes an annual trip to the island where her mother was buried. Each year while there, she "takes on a new lover every night), according to a review from publisher Penguin House, which describes the novel as a "profound meditation on freedom, regret, self-transformation and the mysteries of love ".
García Márquez's sons have confirmed that there are no other unfinished novels in storage. "All of Gabo's work is now available to his readers," Gonzalo said.
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